


The Only Nice Thing That Follows

by hellogaywatson



Category: Trigun, Trigun (Anime)
Genre: Anime Wolfwood, Canon - Anime, Clumsy Affection, Drinking, Episcopalianism: Catholicism with 75 percent less give-a-crap, I refuse to spell Millie with a y, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Professional Hot Messes, Smoking, Vash isn't really an idiot except for all those times when he is, Vash with Anime backstory and Manga-ish personality, a good excuse to call Wolfwood "Father", and General Emotional Immaturity, don't ask me why this is a sticking point for me but it is, practically an AU because Wolfwood does actual priest shit, references to the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, religion as written by a skeptic, taking huge liberties with translation, that blessed gap in between episodes 18 and 19, vulgarity
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-14
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-06 21:29:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14656599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellogaywatson/pseuds/hellogaywatson
Summary: When you find water in the middle of the desert, you drink first and ask questions later.





	1. Chapter 1

_What’s wrong?_

_I failed to save someone again._

_Oh, well – it’s human nature to make a few mistakes.  Just be more careful next time._


	2. Chapter 2

When the whole thing starts, he’s always playing a game of maybe-maybe-not with himself, reading the room, calculating the odds, making the best decision possible from second to split-second.

To say he’s not prepared would be an understatement.  If anything, he’s been _over_ prepared, ready to use every second of experience and training, fully expecting to go toe-to-toe with a monster, a force of nature given human form.  The reality is complicated, delicately nuanced, and…dumb.  Just dumb.

He hadn’t expected a person.  He definitely hadn’t expected _this_ person.

In every moment he weighs citywide destruction against simple acts of kindness, the deaths of those left with no resources against the ultimate courage-stupidity hybrid.  He uses every new situation as a scientific study, and the results keep surprising him even though they’re kind of the same every time.

_G’night Vash, sweet dreams, maybe tomorrow I’ll turn you over to your crazy murderous family._

By all rights Augusta should’ve cleared things up, but it’s no help at all.  He watches the buildings crumble and blow away to dust, sees the pulse of light that shoots straight across the sky to drill a hole into the moon, and he remembers why he came, what he’s lost, how once he was willing to do anything to make the people of this planet less angry and afraid, to help kids keep their parents safe and whole at their sides.  But mostly he remembers the screaming, the unmistakable sound of a body getting hijacked.

It’s nothing new for him to hear those screams in his sleep, but now he’s not sure whether they’re coming from him, or from Vash.

So he keeps playing the game and he watches and waits, chasing rumors across towns, cities, expanses of sand.

_Vash the Stampede?  Sure, he’s kind of a local hero in these parts, if you can believe it.  Fixed up our old plant, saved us all from extinction.  You can’t believe everything you hear, Father.  But that was a long time ago now._

_Heard he took a hit job for the leader of one of the caravans.  They were only a couple of kids.  Kids!  And the bastard killed ‘em just the same, without batting an eye._

_Man came in a while back, said he’d ridden a bus with Vash all the way into May City.  Said he was terrified for his life every second._

_But he’s not been seen in months, nowhere, nohow._

_Must be layin’ low after blowin’ that hole in the moon.  Knows we’d shoot his head off soon as look at him if he showed his face here._

_…didn’t you hear, Mister?  Vash the Stampede is dead.  Leastways that’s what my momma says._

_Died in Augusta, way I hear it._

_…serves him right._

A horrifying amount of time passes in which he gets progressively more frantic and desperate even as he suspects himself of dragging things out on purpose, and every day he’s more shocked and suspicious that none of Knives’ crew have come to blink him out of existence for his failings.

Finally he finds himself in a shitty hospital that’s understaffed and understocked just like every other hospital on this shitty planet, staring down what’s not so much a man as a topographical map, and he knows.  A piece of his heart makes the call without even bothering to check in with his brain, but that’s it, show’s over.

There is no way in hell he’s ever going to sell this guy out, not ever, never in a hundred thousand years.

And he knows full well that with this decision he’s given himself a terminal diagnosis.  Months to live.  Maybe weeks.

Better spend ‘em wisely.


	3. Chapter 3

He can’t decide whether to be furious or grateful, so eventually he stops trying to pick one and lets them take turns.

Losing his makeshift normality is raw and painful, one in a long series of open wounds.  It wasn’t supposed to be like this; he’d had it all planned out.  This was going to be the last stop.  The world would be as imperfect as ever but it would go on instead of descending into a raging inferno of destruction because he was an ordinary person now, playing an ordinary supporting role in the little community he was a part of and trying to be a good big brother/crazy uncle.  He’d almost managed to convince himself that he’d age and die of natural causes through sheer force of will.

But.

Seeing Wolfwood’s face is like coming up from deep underwater.  It brings him out of “good neighbor Alex” and back into himself, all the good and the bad, the bold outlines of everything between July and Augusta.

Over his long life he’s made many friends, at least by his personal definitions, but everyone has stayed behind after he’s walked away (and to be fair it’s often because he skips town in the dead of night, like a thief).  Everyone, that is, but three exceptional people he’s only met a few heartbeats ago in the vast scheme of things.

The insurance girls were simply doing their jobs, in their own words, although with a fervor that he suspects was above their pay grade.  Each morning when he left the house for the first few months he half-expected to see the outline of their thomases on the horizon.  It wasn’t until he helped Lina celebrate her birthday that he finally admitted they’d given him up as a lost cause.

Then there’s Wolfwood.  He’s a friendly enigma, always has been, an odd bit of consistency with no apparent rhyme or reason but there he is, even when he’s not really _there_ at all – he just sits on Vash’s brain and refuses to budge.

If he were more religious or superstitious (whatever the difference is between those things) he might suspect Wolfwood of being something a bit beyond human, with the way he just happens to pop up whenever things are getting interesting and that uncanny aim of his that can’t be explained by a hundred years of practice.  (“Never fired a gun before” my ass.)  But Vash has never really believed in God, not least because he has a sneaking suspicion that if there are gods he might be one of them and he’s got enough to deal with without having to handle that, too.

When all is said and done, it’s nice to have someone – anyone – willing to follow him to the ends of the earth for some reason other than putting a bullet in his head, even if it’s to give him a kick up the ass instead.  And if he’s honest with himself, which he really does try to be as much as he can bear, he needed that kick.

But it stings all the same.


	4. Chapter 4

The bike, which he christened Angelina over a shot of Evan Williams, gets them across the expanse of desert to the next settlement in more or less the same shape they were in when they left.

Riding over open sand is noisy and grimy and hell on bikes, but it gives them the benefit of silence between them in which Vash can get in some much-needed moping time and Wolfwood doesn’t even have to deal with looking at his pouty lip.  The only way he knows Vash is there at all is the constant weight of arms around his waist, and occasionally the press of Vash’s head against his back when his companion nods off for a while.  It’s grounding in a way, that point of contact – better than being alone.  Human beings weren’t meant for prolonged solitude.  The way his life aligns with Vash’s, the moral proximity he has to the other man, is fucked all to high heaven – but it’s good not to be alone.

They stop at the first outcropping of rock to break up the monotony of the sand so they can stretch their legs and partake of the shade, sharing water and making their first raid on Vash’s pack.  His surrogate family was generous with everything from rations to kindling, though Wolfwood hopes they won’t need the latter just yet as they should be able to make it back to civilization not too long after sunsdown.

“So you eat meat, huh?” he says more by way of making conversation than anything else, gesturing towards Vash’s struggle with thomas jerky and a knife.

“Beg pardon?”  Vash looks up from his self-appointed task; he’s got two perfect circles of clean skin around his eyes from the goggles that are now shoved up onto his drooping crest of hair and is filthy pretty much everywhere else.

“I had you figured for a vegetarian.  Y’know, sacredness of life and all that.  So killing’s ok if you get food out of it?”

Vash finally gets a strip of meat off the hunk and chews in thoughtful silence with no large amount of dignity, but thomas jerky doesn’t maintain a whole lot of dignity for anyone.  He swallows and gives Wolfwood a long, hard look.  “What am I suppos’d to do,” he asks, “eat _plants_?”

There follows a very long three seconds in which Wolfwood’s brain utterly betrays him by reacting at the same time it reminds him that he shouldn’t react, with the result that his mouth hangs open with nothing coming out of it while Vash slowly chews another piece of jerky with zero shift in facial expression and somewhere in the middle of all this Wolfwood realizes the son of a bitch is _baiting_ him, _on purpose._

Finally Vash’s mouth quirks up in one corner and he huffs a little laugh through his nose before shoving an arm into his pack, digging around with intense focus until his face lights up and he pulls out what looks like a small sun, holding it out to his companion with a conciliatory smile.

Wolfwood remembers three oranges on three Christmases when he was small, those few precious years before everything went to shit.  He would hoard them for days, tossing them gently from hand to hand and breathing in the bitter scent of the skin until his mom lamented they’d go bad and be wasted, and only then would he peel and eat them one juicy slice at a time, making them last as long as he could, vowing that someday he’d be rich enough to eat oranges every week.  Seeing that bright, round fruit out in the middle of the desert, he couldn’t be more surprised if Vash were Santa Claus himself.

He holds his own hand out and Vash drops the orange into it.  It makes a satisfying _thwack_ against his palm.  He trusts his shades to give him a decent poker face, to help him not to blow what’s left of his cover as he throws Vash a bone, showing part of his hand so he can keep his best cards hidden.  “…this didn’t come off of you, did it?”

Vash snorts laughter, eyes crinkling.  “Once every couple months a caravan would come in on their way to September from the geoplant down south.  Grandma Sheryl had a weakness for blood oranges.  Pretty much the only indulgence she’d allow herself to – oh, what?  No, stop that, _geez_.”  He rips the fruit back out of Wolfwood’s hand before he can take a knife to it.  “You gotta be _gentle_.”  He rolls the sphere between his palms for a few seconds before digging the tip of a finger in near the pucker at the base and pulling back the peel in one wide, petal-like piece so that most of the stringy stuff goes with it.  “See?”

Inside it looks even more like one of the suns, like that dark orange-red they get before they sink below the horizon line, dull enough that you can look straight at them without hurting your eyes.  Wolfwood pulls the segments apart as near to half as he can – it makes a beautiful, crisp snapping sound – and hands one half back to Vash.

They eat without speaking; words would be a pointless distraction.  The blood orange tastes even better than the ones Wolfwood remembers from childhood, the tang gentler, the sweetness more complex.  Just as he did when he was a boy he draws it out as long as he can, licking juice from his fingers unselfconsciously, especially after he realizes Vash is doing the same thing.

“What’d I do to deserve this, Spikey?”

“Deserve, nothing,” Vash insists around his final slice.  “There’s nobody I hate enough to eat an entire orange in front of them by myself and make them watch, that would just be mean.”

Wolfwood pulls a cigarette and his lighter from his pocket.  It takes three tries before he gets a flame – lighter fluid is yet another thing to add to his list when they get back into town.  “I wouldn’t’ve blamed you, after I pulled you away like that.”  He takes a deep drag; the flavor left in his mouth makes it better.

“I’m not mad,” Vash says with a shrug.  “Not at you.”

“Who at, then?”

“I dunno.”  He plonks onto his back with his hands behind his head, sighing up at the sky.  “Life?”

Wolfwood tucks the peel into his pocket next to his carton of cigarettes in the hope that some of the scent and the taste will work its way into them.  A few days later he pulls out a dried up leathery thing that smells like nicotine and faintly of rot.  So it goes.


	5. Chapter 5

They pass through a series of towns, the kind that have one bar and one thomas apiece, with names like Endeavor and New Start and Little Hope.  They have an argument over the implications of the name of the last one that goes on for the better part of twenty minutes and might have gone on longer if Vash hadn’t cut it off pretending to get distracted after it started going to bad existential places.  If he’s a glass half full kind of guy, Wolfwood oscillates between half empty and claiming that there is no glass and never has been.

There’s as many variants to Nicholas D. Wolfwood as any human Vash has ever met, but he seems to have two primary modes from which all the other facets of his personality spring.  The first is a kind of affectionate cynicism, a shake-your-head-and-smile acceptance that the world is deeply flawed but still likable for all that or maybe even because of it.  The second is an all-encompassing anger that is no less intense for all it can be so quiet.

Vash would happily travel with Affectionate Cynic Wolfwood for the rest of his natural life and would just as soon leave Black Mood Wolfwood behind in a bar somewhere.  Since there’s no separating them, he does his best to study up on what takes his companion from 0 to 60 on the cranky scale, and basic observation provides him with a few straightforward precautions:

                -Eliminate any long gaps between when he stops drinking and when he hits the mattress.

                -Stay out of trouble as much as possible.  (This one is the hardest, since Wolfwood’s definition of “trouble” is awfully broad.)  

                -Make sure he never runs out of cigarettes.  _Ever_.

Despite all Vash’s best efforts it seems like Wolfwood keeps finding _new_ things to get pissed off about, and he has to constantly remind himself that this guy is considered “nearing middle age” in human terms and he can’t even blame the impetuous nature of youth.

For instance, they’re out drinking one night because it’s what they’ve always done.  Vash is glowing gently in the one-shot buzz (and this low tolerance for alcohol has gotten him far into Wolfwood’s good graces since he’s always, as the other guy puts it, “such a cheap date”) while Wolfwood is four shots deep, what Vash thinks of as his chatty stage, and is attempting to explain the central moral conundrums of the book of Job and how believers at various stages of recorded history have attempted to reconcile them with the faith.  Which is genuinely interesting – Vash has been nodding along the whole time and interjecting questions or reactions while he has a fierce internal debate over whether or not to take that second shot, because yeah sure he _wants_ it and the increasingly pleasant haze he knows it will provide but it’ll also significantly limit his abilities to listen and make conversation – but before he can give in and knock it back Wolfwood’s eyes go stormy and his posture gets stiff, and he clams up so completely that Vash can hear perfectly when one of the guys at the table behind them says his own name – _Vash the Stampede._

Vash takes the shot immediately because it’s what a normal guy having a normal night at the bar would do while the folks one table over are certainly not talking about him and his extensive criminal record because he’s so _normal,_ but since Wolfwood is continuing to glower in stony silence he can’t help but overhear what comes next.

“I shoulda killed him right then and there.”

“You’re fulla shit, Quincey.”

“ ‘m not.  He couldn’t’a been ten feet from me.  Sittin’ right there in front of God and everybody.”

“Fulla shit.”

“ ‘m _not_ , swear to Christ.  It was right after that big to-do the next city over, you remember?  And he had the red coat, the hair stickin’ up, had that big silver Colt he carries around.”

Vash fights the compulsion to try and squash his hair down as his gun weighs suddenly very heavy where it’s tucked into his pants, and he hopes against hope that the guy is talking about something twenty years back in his bygone youth and has no real memory of his face.  He tries to scoot over and hide from the next table behind the bulk of Wolfwood’s shoulders, so he has a perfect vantage point to watch in horrified fascination as Wolfwood proceeds to take in a quantity of whiskey deeply disproportionate to the amount of time it takes him to drink it. 

“Fucker was _smilin’_ , Zeke.  _Smilin’._   Chattin’ up the lady tendin’ bar, not a care in the world.  Like he had any fuckin’ right.”

“…you’re really not pullin’my leg?  No lie, for real?”

“For real.  I just sat there with my insides twistin’ wonderin’ how everyone in that place could be so fuckin’ _stupid_ , just waitin’ for _somebody_ to do… _somethin’_ , y’know?  And nobody did.  Nobody did, Zeke, and I – by the time I realized it was me or nothin’, he was gone.  There’s not a day goes by I don’t regret not puttin’ a bullet between his eyes.  I coulda done it, he was _that_ close.  Coulda blown him away right then and there, saved Augusta, saved the goddamn _world-_ ”

Vash is about to accidentally-on-purpose drop something small and quiet, maybe Wolfwood’s matchbook, so he has an excuse to crawl under the table for a while, when all of a sudden Wolfwood rises and turns in one smooth swoop like the very wrath of God and fixes his glower on the guy called Quincey.

“So.  You really think you coulda gone after Vash the Stampede all on your lonesome and still be here, all in one piece, to tell the story now?  Coulda done the world some kind of big damn favor?  Huh?”

Vash doesn’t smack his palm against his forehead, but it’s a near thing. 

Quincey sneers, baring teeth with nicotine stains that could give even Wolfwood a run for his money.  “Th’ hell’s it to you, preacher man?”

“Nothing much, neighbor, I just seem to remember reading somewhere that humility is a trait of the virtuous.”

Quincey’s face curves up into a sardonic grin.  “Never been a believer, myself.”

“You don’t say.”

“Got no use for a pack of pretty lies.  Besides which I never knew a preacher wasn’t in it for the free money and the easy access to the women of the parish.”  He gives a contemplative snort.  “Or the children.”

There follows the most dangerous silence Vash has ever not-heard in his long life.          

By now every other patron of the bar has gone quiet and is watching the drama unfold, even the bartender who is nervously polishing the same glass over and over again.  Vash decides he doesn’t need a reason to crawl under the table, and simply goes for it.

Wolfwood gives an exaggerated sigh.  “There’s no need to rub it _in_ like that, fella.  You don’t follow the faith, hey, that’s your choice, but you had to go and make it _personal_.  Really hurts my _feelings_ , y’know?  And I’m already hurting from having to sit here and listen to all your self-congratulating _bullshit_.” 

Quincey snorts again, visibly bristling.  “I don’t gotta take that from you, up there on your holier-than-thou mountain with your fuckin’ commandments and your _ooooh, it’s not right to kill people_ – sure I hesitated, sure I missed my chance, but you, you’ve signed your balls off to Jesus, you’d never take the shot at all.”

“Oh, fella.”  Wolfwood’s eyes flash and Vash swears he can see him calculating the distance between his hand and the Punisher where it’s lying wrapped up and innocent beneath the table.  “You got me figured all wrong.”

There comes a time for decisive action, and this, Vash thinks, is most definitely it, so he puts aside his aversion to pain both physical and emotional and comes up with his head and shoulder hard enough against the table that the round top comes clean off the single central leg and sends Wolfwood sprawling, even as Vash gets a heel against one of the arms of the Punisher and slides it back and out of reach.

“Sorry!” he says, affecting a state of inebriation well beyond where he actually is, and it’s not even that hard because, yup, those are a couple of stars he’s seeing in his peripheral vision and his head is going to be wicked sore tomorrow.  He tries to keep his voice as low and gruff as it is slurred, at least compared to normal, and hopes like crazy that the blow to his head flattened his hair beyond recognition.  “So, _so_ sorry, friends, he gets _crazy_ crabby when he’s drunk.  It’s the only flaw,” he can’t resist adding, “in his otherwise stellar representation of his profession.  I assure you.”

Wolfwood pushes himself up to his knees and turns to give him a look that would likely have killed a lesser man where he stood.  “Spikey, what the _hell-_ ”

Vash pulls him to his feet and then staggers, enough so to justify putting an arm around Wolfwood’s shoulders which he then uses to start steering him firmly doorward.  “Forgive him, friends.  Would that you’d met under better circumstances.  And forgive them, Father.”  He adds under his breath, “They really, _really_ know not what they do.”

“Spikey, I am gonna fucking _murder-_ ”  Wolfwood squirms, trying to break out of the grip Vash has on him, the very picture of let-me-at-‘em, so Vash staggers again and takes out two empty bar stools while he tightens his hold, digging into his pocket with his other hand and slapping all the double-dollars he can find on the counter without bothering to count. 

“Keep the change, a’ight?  Sorry for the trouble.”

The bartender, timid soul that he appears to be, seems to decide that the removal of both these people from his establishment is worth a broken table, and gives Vash a brisk nod.

Vash hoists the Punisher up with his free hand – thank goodness it’s his synthetic because _Christ_ the thing is heavy – and makes for the door, and by now all the patrons are so taken up with the Goofy Good-Natured Drunk Guy Show that they’re content to watch him leave, shake their heads over their drinks, and go about their previous conversations.  He can even hear Quincey and Zeke snickering crudely behind them.

Once they’re clear of the swinging doors Vash drops the stagger and hoists the Punisher up onto his shoulder with a heavy sigh.  “ _Geez_.  You really are a lot of trouble, you know that?  And you tell _me_ to watch my act, that’s – that’s plain hypocrisy.”  Wolfwood gives nothing but a loud snort in response, so Vash continues.  “If getting drunk means you’re going to get into brawls, particularly with people who might know my face and attempt to kill me on the spot, you gotta start drinking less.”

Wolfwood digs his sunglasses out of his pocket and crams them onto his face.  “ ‘m not _that_ drunk,” he insists with a surly curl of his lip, and then immediately collides with a thomas post.

“Wolfwood-”  Vash puts a hand out to help him regain his balance, forcibly biting back on further comment.

Wolfwood rights himself with a glare and holds out both hands, making a “give it” gesture with one of them.  Vash sighs again and relinquishes the Punisher, which Wolfwood throws over his back before turning and walking all the way to the hotel without so much as a backward glance.  Vash walks behind him, gazing ahead in a fog of melancholy at his hunched shoulders.  They always go all high and tight like that when Wolfwood’s in one of his Moods. 

By the time they’re in the hallway of the hotel, however, Wolfwood is making the descent from angry drunk to sloppy drunk at record speed.  Vash has to hold him up with one hand while he delves into Wolfwood’s coat pocket with the other to retrieve the key, because now apparently _he’s_ the responsible one, great, just great.  By some miracle the Punisher stays upright, probably because it’s practically like an extra limb to the man carrying it, but once they get in the door and it’s leaning up against a wall Vash’s careful guidance is the only thing that keeps Wolfwood from turning into a puddle on the floor.  Vash drops him off at the bed like a set of luggage and sprawls into the room’s single threadbare armchair, dragging his hands down his face and sputtering at the ceiling.  His two-shot buzz is utterly killed, which he mightily resents because neither one of them is exactly made of money, here, and a quick rifle through his pockets confirms his fears that the better part of what he had left from the stack of bills Sheryl gave him has been lost to the night’s activities.

He casts a glare at his traveling companion, who is face down and spread-eagled on the bed, taking up as much space as it’s possible for someone of his stature to take, and still wearing his sunglasses.  Vash crosses the room in one long stride and pokes him, hard, between the shoulder blades.  “Hey.  Crap priest.”  Wolfwood responds with a miserable groan and doesn’t budge.  “Sheesh, you really are a shitty drunk.  This is what you get for taking it in so fast like that.  C’mon, scoot.”  He pulls Wolfwood by one arm until he’s half dangling off the edge of the bed, then lifts his outer leg to drop it next to the other one, all of which is easy because the guy’s gone completely limp.  “Hell if I’m sleeping in the chair or on the floor tonight, after what you put me through.”

Wolfwood mumbles something urgent-sounding but incoherent into the pillow, so Vash ungently turns his head to the side and tugs the sunglasses off, setting them on the nightstand.  “Th’ suit,” Wolfwood slurs once his mouth is facing open air again.  “Spikey – I can’t sleep in th’ suit.”

Vash puts one forefinger to each side of the bridge of his nose and counts, slowly, to five before consigning himself to his fate and pulling off both of Wolfwood’s shoes, then his socks.

Wolfwood has enough pairs of socks and underwear to make sharing a room with him on a regular basis bearable, but he only has one suit of clothes, and is consequently extremely protective of it.  It seems impractical to Vash for a man whose job involves near constant travel in blazing hot temperatures, but he understands it’s a result of poverty rather than preference.  Wolfwood will only sleep in his clothes if the alternative is hypothermia, which even during the chilly nights is usually not a condition of Gunsmoke hotel rooms.  Vash had learned quickly, much to his fascination, that Wolfwood lacked the prominent tan lines he’d expected and instead was that same nice caramel color all over, and was not particularly shy about showing it.

He takes a seat next to Wolfwood and hauls him up until he’s sitting too.  At least the other man has enough coordination left to undo his own buttons, so all Vash has to do to pitch in is drag his sleeves off of him before he ties his own arms in a knot.

“Spikey…”  Wolfwood breaks the contemplative silence he’s lapsed into as Vash helps pull his shirt from his shoulders.  “…dozzenit ever make you angry?”

“Doesn’t what make me angry?  I assume you’re not talking about having to babysit you, I think it’s pretty clear how thrilled I am about that.  Move your ass, I am _not_ taking off your pants.”

Wolfwood gives his head a dull shake as he fumbles with the button on his fly.  “Nah, I mean – hearing people talk ‘bout you like that.  Like…you’re some kinda demon, like the whole world’d be better off without you innit.  Dozzenit, I dunno, _get_ to you?”

“Not really.”  Vash quickly averts his eyes as Wolfwood ineffectually tries to take his pants off without standing up and sends his underwear sliding down his hips with them.  “Wow, you are _useless._ ”  He hauls him up by the armpits so Wolfwood can clumsily get the waistband of his pants below ass-level.

“ ‘d make _me_ angry,” Wolfwood mumbles darkly into his chest before Vash plonks him back down.

“And does, apparently.  You know, if I wanted someone to start defending my honor, I’d ask.”

“Dozzint _anything_ piss y’off?  I mean like – _really_ piss y’off.”

He has to remind himself that Wolfwood hadn’t been there to see him go up against Monev, that while Wolfwood wears his anger like the crosses on his cuffs, he’s still blessedly ignorant of what Vash’s rage looks like.

“Sure.  I get mad sometimes.”  Vash pulls Wolfwood’s clothes from the floor and takes them to the room’s rickety little closet, neatly draping them over hangers.  “But y’know, I’ve been around for a while, and people are running out of ways to surprise me.”

He says things like this constantly since leaving his makeshift family behind and taking up with Wolfwood, these sort of half-truths, the kinds of things that would only mean something to the other man if he knew everything, and he always hopes that Wolfwood will rise to the challenge even as he wishes with equal fervency that he won’t.

As usual Wolfwood doesn’t say anything at all, just gazes past Vash at the window with the look of a dog who’s been kicked.

Vash crosses back over and drags the clothes he sleeps in out of his pack where it’s lying near the foot of the bed.  “I’m gonna clean up a bit.”  He claps Wolfwood on the back, a little clumsily.  “Do me a favor and fall asleep before you start getting maudlin.”  Wolfwood gives a noncommittal grunt and sprawls across the bed on his back, staring up at the ceiling like he’s hoping somebody wrote some answers up there.

The bathroom is just big enough for Vash to squeeze in between the shower and the sink and change with his back to the mirror.  His hair scrapes against the single bare lightbulb and the shower head isn’t high enough for him to stand up straight underneath it, but he’s used to that by now.  In between his white button-down and the long-sleeved shirt he uses as pajamas, he sticks his head into the shower and rinses out the last remnants of grease left from his morning upkeep.

Once he’s dried off and fully dressed, he comes out of the bathroom to find Wolfwood exhaling a cloud of smoke as he continues to gaze ponderously up at the ceiling, the room’s tin ashtray balanced on his sternum.

“Wolfwood, we've _talked_ about this, dammit-”  He leaves his clothes on the chair and quickly crosses to the bed, stealing the last sad remnants of Wolfwood’s cigarette from his mouth and squashing it into the ashtray, which he sets on the nightstand with a clatter.  “It’s no business of mine what you do on your own time but I refuse to pay whatever extra fee they charge you when you burn your room down.  At least sit up while you do it, ok?”

“Tried,” Wolfwood insists.  “Didn’ work.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”  Vash decides the easiest way to get access to the underside of the covers is to pull them as far down as they’ll go on one side, half-shove half-roll Wolfwood in that general direction, and then slip under them on the opposite side.  It’s more or less successful.  “Just trying to keep you from burning to death when I’m not around, pal.  Unless you die of lung cancer first.”

Wolfwood closes his eyes.  “’m never gonna live that long.”

“…Jesus.  I told you to drop off _before_ the maudlin kicked in, remember?”  Vash extends an arm to switch off the lamp directly, rather than go all the way to the door to flip the switch on the wall.

“…hey Spikey?”

“Yeah?”  Vash turns to face him, still half-sitting.

“Been meanin’ to say.  You don’t gotta go hiding around corners from me, if you don’t wanna.”  He gestures with a floppy arm in Vash’s general direction.  “’ve seen everything there’s to you already.”

Vash looks at Wolfwood blankly for a moment, and then a soft laugh finds its way out of him.  “Sure, sure, you say that, but I know better.”

“…whazzat?”

“I think…people forget.  How bad it is.  Even if they’ve seen it before.  And you, you look at all this-” Vash waves his hand at himself vaguely.  “It’s gonna make you angry.  Either at me for, I dunno, being careless or selfless or whatever, or at the people that put them there.  And I don’t want you getting pissed off just from looking at me.”

Wolfwood rolls away from him, and after a few seconds he says, very softly, “Thass fair.”

Vash watches his shoulders gently rise and fall with his breath, glad to see all the tension finally gone out of them.  He scoots down the bed aways and carefully detangles the covers from Wolfwood’s legs before pulling them up to cover his companion, then rolling away to his side of the bed and cozying up.  It’s far from the worst bed he’s ever slept in, a little lumpy but comfy enough.  The springs are loud, so he tries his best to find a good position and stay in it; Wolfwood’s a lighter sleeper than he is.

Through the haze of his building sleepiness he hears Wolfwood murmur a string of words all melted together into one, so quiet that he almost thinks he imagined it.

“Thankzfertakincarofme.”

“Yeah,” he replies, just as quiet.  “Well, we’re even now.”


	6. Chapter 6

Angelina dies a tragic death on the outskirts of a midsized community with the precocious name of Prosperity.  Luckily the breakdown occurs close enough to town that Wolfwood and Vash are able to work together to roll her in and sell her for parts.  _Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine._

The food from Sheryl has finally run out, and both of them are starting to look a little worse for the wear.  With the money from scrapping the bike and what little they have left lining their pockets, they have just enough for two nights in a modest hotel, the corresponding two days’ worth of food and water, and bus fare to their next destination.  “Well,” Wolfwood says once they’ve settled into their room and Vash has shooed out a few of the larger insects, insisting in spite of several eye-rolls that they not be killed.  “Time to work for a living.”

He calls in a solid you-owe-me on Vash and sends him into town with his suit and what could have been bus fare money, then settles in at the rickety table to review his little black book, making notes with a blunt pencil as he goes.  The heat is stifling, sending beads of sweat skidding down his back even with his lack of clothing, and he tries his hardest to focus on the words instead of the nicotine craving.  It’s a losing battle; he goes through two of his remaining five cigarettes before Vash returns with a clean, crisp suit that smells of chemicals, his face flush and cheerful.  He also has a rumpled paper bag, from which he produces six homemade sandwiches and about a third of a bottle of Maker’s Mark, and his pocket is freshly lined with five double dollars in single bills.

Wolfwood whistles in admiration.  “How’d you come by all this?”

“Oh, this and that.  Walked some cleaning out to a nice old lady on the edge of town who doesn’t get around so well on her own anymore, in exchange for a little cash.  Then it turned out her neighbors were doing storm damage repairs on their house and their stable, so I stuck around for a few hours and helped out.  Hence the sandwiches and booze.”

Wolfwood helps himself to one of the sandwiches – it’s good, tinned fish from the farms out in Octovern, decent bread for once.  “That’s a nice change of pace for you, huh?  Fixing things instead of breaking them.”

Vash pulls a face.  “That’s slander.  It’s the bounty hunters who wreck things.  _I_ ,” he insists through a bite of sandwich, “am graceful and refined.”

“Sure, sure.”  He closes the book and taps the pencil against the thin-lined cross on the cover.  “With any luck, between doing my homework and a nice clean suit – much obliged – I’ll bring in a haul even bigger than this tomorrow.” 

Vash lifts the cover up with a single finger.  “What’s this, your Bible?”

“Nah, got no use for a Bible, there’s bound to be something in it makes everyone feel like shit about themselves.  This is much better – it’s the script.”  He flips through a few pages to show Vash what he means.  _The Blessing of a Civil Marriage.  Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child.  An Order for Burial._   “This, my friend, is a nicely portable package of eloquence.”

Vash’s eyes scan over the tiny print.  “Seems to me like people wouldn’t be overconfident in a churchman who needs to refer back to an instruction manual just to correctly splash water on a baby.”

“Quite the contrary,” Wolfwood counters around a mouthful of crust.  “There’s nothing comforts folks like seeing a man in black read out of a little black book.  It’s that firm foundation, y’know?  It’s law and order.  And because I’m the only one reading it, I can, well…”  He shrugs.  “I can meet anybody’s needs, with a few minor tweaks.” 

Vash cocks an eyebrow at him.  “I see.”

“We are all of us made in the image of the Almighty,” Wolfwood drawls, leaning back in his chair, “and what is our heavenly Father if not a master of creativity?”

Vash shakes his head and glances back down at the book, but the corner of his mouth twitches.  “Hey,” he says after a few pensive moments of page-flipping.  “Whatever happened to your-”  He outlines the dimensions of a box in the air with his palms.  “You know, your little confessional?”

Wolfwood sighs.  “Drop-kicked in May City by an angry parishioner.”

“Mm.  _Requiescat in pace_.”

“Amen.”

Wolfwood borrows Vash’s pajama pants, rolled up a considerable amount at the ankles, and draws a basin of water from the pump out back – Prosperity’s the kind of town where not even the richest folks have indoor running water.  He uses half the little bar of complimentary soap to wash himself off the best he can without the convenience of an actual bath, and the rest to ease the path of his straight razor over three day’s worth of stubble.  He smokes one more cigarette, putting off the inevitable suffusion of the suit with the smell of smoke for just a little longer, and then dresses slowly, trying to keep the press job done at the cleaner’s intact.  He fits as much of his reflection as he can manage into the room’s time-stained mirror, straightening his collar and wishing he had enough money for a haircult.  Vash, who’s been passing the time between contentedly watching him and reading through _Daily Morning Prayer: Rite One_ , gives a low whistle.  “Who is this distinguished man of God, and what has he done with my friend?”

Wolfwood extends him an affable middle finger as he scrutinizes his reflection, finally coming to a decision and popping open two shirt buttons.  “Ah,” Vash says, looking back down at the pages, “there you are, Wolfwood.”

“Hey, in these sad times the promise of grace and salvation alone is not enough to get people’s attention.”  He beckons for his prayer book, which Vash offers up on his open palms in a ceremonial gesture.  “I’m afraid you’re gonna hafta drink alone tonight, Spikey.  Time for me to go and make myself available.”

Vash gives him a performative eye-narrow.  “…you sure this is church work you’re talking about?”

Wolfwood grants him a tight-lipped but cheerful smile in return before pocketing the book and heading for the door.  “Up yours, broomhead.”

“In your dreams, preacher man.”

He turns up the charm and spends his few double dollars buying drinks for other people instead of himself so effectively that by the time he stumbles back to the hotel and grasps for his penultimate cigarette like a lifeline, he’s got two baptisms and a set of last rites set up for the following day, and the loose change from three confessions in his pocket.

“It never ceases to amaze me,” he tells Vash as he hangs up his suit, “the way people’s idea of sinful behavior differs from town to town.  I go out for confessions, I never know _what_ I’m gonna get, but tonight I got a full seventy-five c-cents off a lady just because she was having ‘impure thoughts’ about her next-door neighbor.  Roughly her same age.  Neither one of them married.  It was all I could do to give the obligatory prayer prescription instead of telling her to just ask the lady out for a drink sometime, but I don’t have a good read yet on how this town treats women who ask other women out.  Potentially not well, if they feel the need to confess over it.”

Vash gives him a bleary smile from the bed, where he was clearly trying to sleep before the door opened and the candle got lit.  “Maybe she’s just shy of her feelings.  Lady I walked the cleaning to had a wife, before she passed away last year.  Still has their picture up.  Didn’t seem like any big thing.  This is a good little town.”

“Sure, if you hate baths and electricity.”  Wolfwood grinds the feeble end of the cigarette out, gives his last one a long look, sighs dramatically, and steels himself to save it for his greater hour of need the next morning.

“Will you have enough money to buy more tomorrow?” Vash asks, suddenly all wide-awake concern.

“Oh, by the time I finish my rounds?  All that and more.  Especially considering whatever they sell here is probably complete shit.”  Vash seems contented with that answer and snuggles back down.  Wolfwood cups his hand around the candle and huffs it out before moving to join him.

“Ever thought about trying to quit?”  Vash murmurs sleepily.

Wolfwood freezes with one hand pulling up the covers as if he’s been slapped.  “Seriously?  You’re gonna start throwing that at me?  Why don’t you just knife me directly in the heart while you’re at it?”

“You make it a pretty clean target,” Vash replies innocently, and Wolfwood tries his best to make his snort sound affronted instead of amused.  “I’m really not trying to start anything with you.  Honest.  I’m curious is all.  Seems like you could save a lot of money.”

“Sure, sure I could, but at what deeper cost?”  He finishes pulling the covers back and sits down with his back to the headboard.  “I did try, once.  In my mid-twenties.  …you understand what an absolute shitfest my existence on this bitch of a planet has been, right?  I don’t need to spell that out for you?”  Vash nods, his outline just visible by the light of the moons.  “So then you understand the gravity of the thing when I say those were, without a doubt, some of the _worst_ days of my life.  And if they were bad for me I can only imagine what they were like for anyone in the damage radius.  This far down my own personal line, I consider not attempting to quit smoking a selfless act of public service”

“At least you’re self-aware,” Vash comments before rolling over and scooting closer to the edge of the bed, giving him a little more personal space to settle into.

When the two of them meet back up downtown the following afternoon, Wolfwood is smoking a badly rolled cigarette he had to put together himself because this really is that kind of town, but he has thirty double dollars to show for his pains.  Vash grants him a wide smile and pulls out an additional fifteen, a mostly-full package of nutrient packets, and a bunch of slices of dried apple wrapped in a kerchief.  Wolfwood blinks.  “…how do you _do_ that?”

Vash blinks back.  “…huh?”

In this fashion they make their way from town to town, scrimping a little each time for the eventual sandsteamer fare they’ll need to cross the wide expanse of mostly uninhabited desert that’s still left between them and Cornelia.  They smoke and drink, respectively, with what Wolfwood can only assume are wildly different levels of guilt, and when they can’t afford the hotels they camp out on the ground in shifts on the outskirts.  Every so often they fall asleep without more than a few words between them because they’re tired and grumpy and very, very hungry.  They’re always living paycheck to paycheck, so to speak, but who isn’t on this planet, besides the Water Barons and the high-level Feds?

Wolfwood plies his trade the best he knows how, and measures how well his week is going by whether the pages for weddings or funerals are more dog-eared.  It’s far more pleasant to work now that he knows where Vash is, more or less, or at leasts trusts the explosions and yelling to alert him in the worst case scenario.  He prefers moving with purpose, and companionship is companionship even if the eventual destination is iles beyond grim.  Most days he doesn’t think too hard about that anyhow, because the finality of it is paralytic, and a person doesn’t make money by freezing up.

No, a person, or at least a wandering priest, makes money by speaking well and listening even better, by keeping a constant lookout for opportunity, and oftentimes by imitating the behavior of a certain famous bibilical figure – withholding judgment and turning the other cheek and all, not being above throwing in lots with the whores and moneylenders.  When he’s in decent spirits, it’s not even hard, because he really doesn’t need all that thick of a mask  – he just watches his language and puts on a little extra grandiosity.  And never lets anyone know, if he can help it, that the cross he carries has been used to end more lives than Jacob had sons.

Uncle so curmudgeonly that every other clergyperson has refused to take his last confession?  Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.  Baptism for a baby of uncertain parentage?  Only God can judge, ma’am, and He hasn’t issued any complaints so far’s I know.  Local clergy refuses to sanctify a same-sex marriage?  Of course I can do that, of course.  It’d be my genuine pleasure.

But you understand, I truly hate to ask, but all God’s children gotta eat, so if you could please give what you can?  I’m not here to bankrupt anybody, sir, but just enough for bus fare to the next town?  Y’know I’m just _this_ shy of having a roof over my head tonight.  Thank you.  _Thank_ you.  God go with you, ma’am.

Meanwhile Vash keeps up whatever magic he’s got so that he never comes back at the end of the day empty-handed, and Wolfwood never asked him for help but he’s got no gripe with accepting it.  Vash’s daily hauls of domestic treasure are often the difference between a fresh pack of cigarettes or going cold a full day, or whether or not they both go to bed hungry.

Prolonged observation makes him deeply sorry for his concerns that in spite of his hefty moral compass Vash might be the kind to steal pies off of window ledges in a pinch.  Given the chance not to be jumped on by rabid bounty hunters, which he seems to maintain easily enough with plainclothes and the name “Alex,” Vash is exactly the kind of genuine ray of pure sunshine who can make friends with anyone possessing at least half of a human heart.  Whenever Wolfwood needs or wants to go looking for him, he can be found trading weather tips with moisture farmers, or constructing a coop for adolescent thomas with his mouth full of nails, or caught in a headlock by anywhere from one to seven of the local kids.  Or, most frequently, doing anything from waiting tables to darning socks in the company of a flush-faced laughing woman.

It’s astounding, quite literally superhuman.  Vash can sweetalk a woman for an hour without even noticing, because he sweetalks _everyone_ without even the slightest hint of ulterior motive – he is just _actually that nice._   Wolfwood speculates that Vash needs that easy charm, the type of personality that can instantly put so many different types of people at ease, because his physical appearance is certainly not going to do the trick.  The number of non-irradiated or otherwise enhanced individuals who can look Vash in the eye standing up is approximately four, one of whom is no longer normalizing his height by traveling with him regularly, and even when Millie was around it drew attention instead to how off Vash’s proportions are.  He’s at least sixty-five percent leg.  He can coax his hair into doing things no mortal hair was meant to do.  And his eyes are frankly ridiculous.  _Nobody_ has eyes like that.  It’s as if whatever plant or plants spawned him had at least a rough idea what a human was supposed to look like and decided to accentuate a few features according to their own alien standards of beauty with the result of something that is uncanny at best and unsettling at worst, in a way that is apparently a huge hit with the ladies.

Wolfwood figures it’s only a matter of time before the night comes when he’s going to have to find a different place to sleep, or at the very least shuffle around town after closing time.  It seems like Vash is two inches away in all directions from getting laid no matter where they go.  For all his sweetness and gabbing, though, he never takes the offer or even the hint.  Wolfwood isn’t sure if it’s out of concern for his companion’s comfort, or some other reason entirely.

He finally brings it up on the rambling front porch of a saloon right around sunsdown, after watching two straight hours of Vash getting hit on so hard by the lady bussing drinks that it’s amazing he doesn’t have bruises.

“Y’know, all you have to do is give me the word if you ever need me to clear out for a few hours, or even the night.  I can keep myself busy.”

Vash knocks back the remainder of his glass.  “How do you mean?”

“If you need the room to yourself.”  Vash turns to him with a head quirk of what really does appear to be genuine puzzlement.  “Y’know.  If you ever want to bring home a woman.”

“Oh.”  Vash rapidly begins to turn a shade of red almost as bright as the coat he used to wear.  “ _Oh._   Uh.  I – appreciate the consideration, but – that’s, uh, that’s really not gonna be an issue.”

“Certainly not for lack of effort on any lady’s part.”

Vash’s blush extends all the way to the tips of his ears, and he mumbles out a line of reasoning that Wolfwood probably could have recited verbatim before this conversation even started if he’d taken ten minutes to really think about it.  Anonymity good, attachment bad, constant danger, scars scars blah blah scars.

Wolfwood sighs and finishes off his own drink.  “I’m not saying you hafta get engaged, Spikey.  Speaking from personal experience, I might add, people don’t make much of a fuss about scars when they’re getting paid.”

Vash’s brow furrows.  “You’re the one who’s always griping about how we need to get better at saving money.”

“True.  But I also, as someone pointed out, spend a lot of it on a vice of which you do not partake.  Doesn’t seem entirely fair to you.”

“It’s not like I never…”  Vash shakes his head and runs his thumb around the edge of his glass.  “But you know how it is.  I hardly ever have enough money for the good places, and the bad ones – Jesus, Wolfwood, most of those people were trafficked, they don’t want to be there.  The conditions are so rotten that all I want to do is get everyone out.”

“Did you?”

“…couple of times.”

Wolfwood smirks and huffs a quiet laugh.

“I could say the same for you, you know,” Vash speaks up after a few moments of lazy silence.  “Let me know if you ever need _me_ to clear out for a while.  Hang up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign a little early.”

“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”

“There’s gotta be someone around who’s interested in quality prayer time.  Willing to throw some more spare change on top of the confessional charge.”

Wolfwood pulls a cigarette from his pack.  “I resent the implication that I’m cheap.”

“Lose another button on that shirt and you’re somebody’s kinky pinup art.”

Remarkable, really.  If any other man on the face of the planet said this to him, he’d punch them in the nose.  As it is he lights up without even meeting Vash’s eyes.  “Spoken like a man who’s been looking.”

“Pretty hard not to look when you’re shoving that cleavage in my face all day.”

“Suck it, Spikey.”

“That you should be so lucky.”


End file.
